


free to a good home

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: BB-8 wash your mouth out, M/M, extremely bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:07:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7452301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn gets a dog. Everything else follows naturally from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	free to a good home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peradi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/gifts).



> For Radi, on the occasion of her being fucking awesome. She originally came up with BB-8's potty mouth, and I make no apologies for snitching the idea.
> 
> Readers should please note that I have not read the EU, and my canon background is limited to the films. This is why I made up a two-seater spacecraft. I couldn't find one anywhere, and Celeste, most patient of betas, pointed out that you cannot get two people and a dog in an X-wing. Readers may also be interested to know that Princess, intergalactic award-winning ball of fluff, is modelled on the writer Mallory Ortberg's dog Sansa. http://the-toast.net/2015/12/07/introducing-sansa-the-puppy/

            In retrospect, Poe should have seen it coming.

 

            They’d found the abandoned village first. Stormtroopers had clearly been there in the recent past, but – Finn said, poking industriously around the ruins – they’d probably found nothing. The village was intact, and missing a significant proportion of the livestock that Poe would have expected from a place like this, to fill the byres and rough paddocks. Although the inhabitants had clearly departed in a hurry, they had also evacuated in their own time. Finn explained, swinging a door on its hinges and dusting off a child’s doll, that if the stormtroopers had found anyone, the village would have been torched. There was no point in wasting firepower on a village if there was no-one there to see it burn, even if the watchers were then taken away at once. The First Order liked to leave one or two alive to tell the tale.

 

            And it was Finn’s keen ears, of course, that picked up the whimpering, which Poe only heard after Finn’s head jerked up and he stuffed the doll into his belt, drew his blaster again, and dove straight into the little thatched house’s dark interior. Poe had suppressed a yelp and gone straight after him, because Force alone knew what -

 

            Finn glanced around quickly and flung himself full-length on the floor. Poe, eyes adjusting poorly to the light, tripped straight over him and fell heavily to the ground.

 

            “What is it?” he hissed, taking a firmer grip on his blaster. “A trap?”

 

            “There you are!” Finn said, in tones of complete delight, and reached straight under a battered food storage container, held off the ground by clay bricks. There was an increase in the pitch of the whimpering, and Finn made a variety of soft crooning noises as he inched backwards across the floor, pulling whatever he’d found with him very gently.

 

            Poe turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling, wondering what mischievous fortune had brought him to this exact point.

 

            “Look at you!” Finn said, delighted, to whatever he had in his arms. “Just look at you!”

 

            Poe sat up, and found that Finn was now cradling a small fluffy bundle of creature, still whimpering and wriggling fruitlessly.

 

            “What are you _doing_?” said Pava from the door.

 

            “Fucked if I know,” Poe said forlornly, and got to his feet. “Come on, Finn, let’s get it out into the light.”

 

            Finn flipped his burden very carefully. “Her,” he said, after a second.

 

            “Her, fine,” Poe said.

 

            In the slightly yellowish light of day, she proved to be a puppy, all enormous, liquid dark eyes, soft black nose, and voluminous greyish-brown fur coat, with paws the size of plates and a broken leg. She also had a very pink tongue and an affectionate nature, as Poe discovered when she licked his fingers.

 

            “I bet she was hiding,” Finn said, stroking her ears very gently as Iolo – whose bedside manner was much better with animals than with humans – gave the puppy the rudimentary painkillers they’d found in the house and splinted her leg. “They obviously cared about their animals. They must’ve been in a rush. I bet she’s got an owner who’s very upset.”

 

            “Some sweet kid, probably,” Poe said, and looked around the clearing.

 

            “Yeah,” Finn said. “We should find them.”

 

            Of course, he insisted on bringing the puppy.

 

            They found the village inhabitants eventually; the whole village had taken to a cave system nearby and almost refused to believe that they were from the Resistance, not the First Order. It was lucky Poe was a charming man, even when he had to conduct negotiations from behind a large rock that sizzled with the occasional panicked blaster shot, and also that he’d done a supply run out here only a year ago and spoke a little Sarkhai. The puppy did have an owner, but it transpired that the entire village planned to relocate across the mountain pass, and the young couple who owned her, her mother, and her littermates were not confident of their ability to transport one injured puppy with all their worldly goods.

 

            Reff and Maia looked at Finn, currently sitting on the floor playing with the puppy and several traumatised children who didn’t need to speak Basic to find Finn a soothing person to be around, and then looked back at Poe and said something that even Poe’s rickety command of the local language could handle.

 

            “What did they say?” Finn called from his seat on the floor. A young boy was painting marks onto his face to match those of the Sarkhai villagers around him, concentration total, tongue sticking out and eyes screwed up with it. Finn was keeping his head perfectly still.

 

            “Free to a good home,” Poe said back, and even though he was now going to have to find space in his C-60 for one wriggly, injured, un-housetrained puppy, the grin on Finn’s face was blinding enough to make his heart melt. 

 

***

 

            “Control, this is Black Leader,” Poe said. “Requesting clearance to land.”

 

            There was a slight pause. “Black Leader from Control. Are you aware there is a third life-form onboard your craft?”

 

            “Control, this is Finn,” Finn said, snuggling the puppy in his arms. Fortunately she had fallen asleep after half an hour of trying to explore the cockpit. Hyperspace seemed to have a soothing effect on her, and Poe hoped it would last, as he hadn’t liked take-off with an excitable puppy in the C-60 and wasn’t sure he was going to like landing if she woke up. “Yes, we are, she’s a puppy.”

 

            There was another slight pause. Poe contemplated bouncing his head off the controls.

 

            “It followed us home so we kept it,” he said instead.

 

            “Black Leader from Control, you are cleared for landing,” Control said, in a slightly strangled voice, and didn’t cut the transmission before she started laughing.

 

***

 

            Finn brought the puppy to their formal debriefing the next day. General Organa had been called away urgently when they should have debriefed – a problem with beverage supplies in the second warehouse, Poe understood, and took that to mean that somebody’s still had malfunctioned and set something on fire again – and they’d missed out on the debrief as a consequence. It wasn’t important. They hadn’t done much of interest, and Finn had submitted a perfect report, hitting every single one of the criteria the Resistance’s intelligence mavens demanded. All Poe had to do these days was proofread Finn’s submissions for First Order jargon. Even after compiling a comprehensive phrasebook of First Order sayings, abbreviations and slang, which had kept him still for about a week of his two-month-long enforced bedrest, Finn occasionally missed something.

 

            Well, all Poe had to do this time was proofread the report and play with the puppy, but still, he felt like he was getting the better end of the deal here. Even if he had had to introduce the puppy to BB-8, who was seriously irritated that she didn’t have a name yet.

 

            [Can I call her Designation-Littlest,] BB-8 had bleeped, spinning in mad circles around Poe and incidentally running over his ankle.

 

            [She’s going to be bigger than you,] Finn had whistled back, absently typing a highly technical description of the weather and the latest atmosphere readings.

 

            [Piss off, banthafucker, she is not!]

 

            Finn suggested BB-8 do something not merely anatomically improbable, but physically impossible for a droid.

 

            “I regret teaching you Binary so much,” Poe said. The puppy rolled onto her back, enormous paws in the air like some small snuggly bug, and Poe scratched her belly as she demanded.

 

            [And you can fuck right off too, Designation-Favourite,] BB-8 whirred. [I shall call her Designation-Fluff.]

 

            “Fluff is a terrible name for a puppy,” Finn said severely, and then jumped a mile as BB-8 shocked him. “Ow! Let me finish this, you wanker!”

 

            “We could call her Fluff,” Poe conceded. “Don’t worry about the report, Finn, the General’s not going to have time for it for another six hours. Worry about naming the puppy. Pava is threatening to call her Jedi.”

 

            “Aw, man, that’s just embarrassing,” Finn said, report woes temporarily forgotten. “What if Rey finds Luke Skywalker and he goes and refounds the Jedi Order or something? I am not naming this dog after a religion.”

 

            “Fair,” Poe said, “but we’ve got to call her something, Finn. You found her, you get to name her.”

 

            “I’ve never tried to name anything before,” Finn said. “It’s difficult.”

 

            Poe’s heart broke a little bit for him yet again, and he set the nameless puppy aside and climbed off the floor to kiss Finn until he stopped looking so worried about a dog’s name, for Force’s sake. A dog’s name. A small thing.

 

 

            But small things could mean a lot, as Poe abruptly discovered the next day, when they arrived at the debriefing with puppy in tow.

 

            “So this must be the hound I’ve heard so much about,” General Organa said, getting out of her chair with a sigh and a smile and crouching down with a slight creak of her knees to extend a hand to the smokey brown puppy bouncing at Finn’s ankles, awkward on her bandaged leg. “Come and say hello, princess.”

 

            “Princess!” Finn exclaimed. “That’s it!”

 

            “What?” General Organa said.

 

            Poe seriously considered banging his head against the General’s heavy wooden desk. “I think you’ve just named the hound. Ma’am.”

 

            “Princess is _perfect_ ,” Finn said seriously, smiling. “Thank you, General, I couldn’t find the right name.”

 

            General Organa stared at Finn in that way she sometimes did when she was trying to work out if Finn really was as straightforward as he looked. The answer, as Poe knew from bitter experience, was always yes; it was just that sometimes there was an ulterior motive, shielded behind the obvious one, or that he didn’t know there was anything that could be misinterpreted. Finn was a fine tactician, but a guileless one.

 

            Then Princess licked General Organa’s fingers, and she was startled into a laugh. “Well, she’s a sweetheart, anyway. You’ll have to train her.”

 

            She got up and went back to her chair, sitting down. Princess followed her, and whined to be allowed to climb onto her lap; General Organa picked her up and stroked her. “So, gentlemen. Tell me about Sarkhai.”

 

***

 

            [YESSSSSSS,] BB-8 whirred triumphantly. [DESIGNATION-SANCTIMONIOUS GOLD BASTARD IS GOING TO LOSE HIS SHIT!]

 

            “Don’t gloat, BB,” Poe said, rapidly developing a pounding headache.

 

***

 

            Poe had wondered if Finn knew how to train a dog. He’d been raised half in space himself, with no pets. Hell, he hadn’t been responsible enough for a pet, eyes always on the stars and the next flight with his mother; he’d begged hard for a lizard once, one of the ones that could change colours and run up walls, and his father had said he could have one if he managed to prove he was responsible. He’d been busted for borrowing the family speeder without permission and crashing it the next month. His mother had told him his technique was off, the manoeuvre he’d attempted too advanced for his skill level, and he was going to spend the next year grounded for wrecking the speeder she’d finally tuned up. His father had simply said that he couldn’t have the lizard.

 

            All of which was to say that Poe had no idea how to take care of a dog, and almost resented the fact that he had been labelled Finn Expert, which meant that everyone who knew about Princess, from Pava to the venerable Mon Mothma, came to him to ask one question. _Does he know what he’s doing?_

 

            “Better than I do,” Poe said, resisting the temptation to flick root mash across the canteen table at Pava. Finn was sitting at the far end of the table, apparently engrossed in teaching Princess to sit.

 

            Pava, who had asked the question in a half-whisper, grimaced at him.

 

            Poe, who disliked people talking behind Finn’s back, glared back at her.

 

            “I have helped train dogs before,” Finn said, with slight reproach, glancing back over his shoulder. “Stormtroopers use them sometimes. Crowd control, mostly, on distant planets. Canids and other big, loyal genuses with good noses – you can’t beat them.” Princess yipped at him, and he laughed at her and gave her the snippet of meat she had been patiently sitting for. “They clone the right ones, but you can’t clone the personality out of a dog, so they’re all still different. Well done, Princess. Who’s a good girl? Who’s a _good girl_?” He stroked her thick ruff and her ears, bigger and fluffier than ever; she was growing fast.

 

            “I can think of a lot of women on this base who are now jealous of a dog,” Pava muttered.

 

            Finn went brick red around the back of the neck, and Poe, who had a mouthful of root mash, kicked Pava under the table.

 

            “Hands off,” he said.

 

            Finn cleared his throat helplessly. “Obviously not all the techniques are right. So I’ve been reading a bit, and getting some advice – actually, General Organa has a lot to say about dog training.”

 

            Poe inhaled his vegetables, coughed, and choked. Pava slapped him on the back.

 

            “You okay?” Finn’s serious brow crinkled.

 

            “Fine,” Poe croaked helplessly. “The general has opinions about dog training?”        

 

            “She used to have a pet dog, apparently,” Finn said. “When she was a girl. On Alderaan.”

 

            There was a suitable pause while they all assimilated the unspoken significance of General Organa having had a pet dog, once, a long time ago, when she still had a father, a mother and a home planet.

 

            “Force preserve us,” Pava said eventually.

 

            “I know, right?” Finn said, and sighed. “I think that’s why she likes Princess so much.”

 

            “Also Princess is a precious beauty,” Pava admitted. “Come here, gorgeous.”

 

            Princess, who was a sucker for compliments, trotted up to Pava and begged for food, pink tongue lolling out of her mouth. Pava ruffled her fur.

 

            “Don’t feed her,” Finn said. “I’m training her for Search and Rescue, I need something for treats!”

 

            “Search and Rescue?” Pava said, eyes meeting Poe’s.

 

            I know, Poe thought hopelessly. He even wants _his dog_ to be useful and beloved.

 

            Out loud, he shrugged and said: “Seems like a good idea.”  


            “I thought it would be the best way to keep her on base,” Finn said. “We all need to pull our weight.”

 

            “They should put you in propaganda holos,” Pava told him. “Right next to Poe.”

 

            Poe rolled his eyes, and Finn laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his head. Pava grinned, and picked up one of Princess’s still-outsized paws. “But you’re not wrong. She’s going to be enormous. It’s good for her to have skills under her belt-”

 

            “-Collar,” Poe said. He’d bargained for the damn thing himself. And had the engraving done. The original had no comm details on it, and what if Princess ran off and got lost? She was still only a puppy.

 

             “Collar,” Pava filled in without missing a beat. “I mean, she’s amazing for morale. Have you noticed how she makes everyone smile? But it’s good to have something extra. To show the bean-counters.”

 

             “Yeah,” Finn said, smiling.

 

            “I bet Rey’ll be surprised,” Pava added. “Do they even have dogs on Jakku?”

 

            “Do they even have anything besides sand and murdery scavengers on Jakku?” Finn countered, and shrugged his shoulders. Princess came to him and put her paws on his knees and licked his face; Finn laughed and made a face but didn’t pull away. “Rey’ll love her.”

 

            And that was the other thing, Poe thought. Finn without Rey to try to protect and worry about had been Finn at a loose end, even though he had months of challenging convalescence to work through, even though he had Poe to anchor him, even though trying to protect a semi-feral semi-Jedi seemed to consist solely of running after her at speed with a jacket in one hand and a blaster in the other as she engaged in single combat with Kylo Ren. Finn still had no official role in the Resistance, despite his wealth of expertise and obvious leadership gifts; there was too much suspicion. General Organa and some of her more experienced commanders would occasionally hand him a small project, as much to test his potential as anything else, but there was nothing consistent for him to do. Princess gave him a role, however slight, and she humanised him to people who had never seen a Stormtrooper out of uniform.

 

           Poe firmly believed that Finn would be a general one day. People of Finn’s calibre were going to win this war. But Princess was good, absorbing company for Finn while everyone else caught up with Poe.

 

          And, kriff it – Princess trotted up to Poe and laid her head on his knee, big dark eyes beseeching – much like Finn, she was too adorable to turn down.

 

***

 

          “Princess,” Finn whispered in the dead of night, causing Poe to roll onto his back and groan. “Princess. You have your _own_ bed.”

 

          “What’s wrong?” Poe mumbled, sitting up on his elbows and squinting into the darkness. He could hear Princess whimpering now, and see the smooth shadow outline of Finn’s back and shoulders where he was propped up on one elbow, talking to a puppy. He put a hand on Finn’s shoulder, careful to avoid the twisting lightsabre scar that carved over Finn’s back; it could still be sensitive sometimes, and not always in a good way.

 

          Poe gave thanks every day for the fact that Finn was still alive, and – a mere seven months out from the injury, thanks to aggressive application of bacta, ground-breaking reconstructive surgery, and a truly stupendous constitution – had escaped without side-effects beyond needing a special mattress and physio exercises. But still. He felt like shit every time he accidentally touched Finn’s scar and tripped something.

 

         “I think she had a nightmare.” Pause. “Do dogs have nightmares?”

 

         “I don’t know, buddy.” Poe reached out over Finn’s waist, and located the soft warm solidness of Princess. “What’s the matter, girl?”  


          The whimpering escalated in pitch.  


          “She keeps trying to get on the bed,” Finn said, with a sort of exasperated fondness. “She can’t sleep with us.”  


           “If it’ll quiet her down,” Poe yawned. “Just this once.”  


           “It’s not going to be just once,” Finn laughed. “Trust me. That’s not how dogs work.”  


           “It’ll be fine,” Poe said, eyelids already falling shut. “Just – we’ll have to make sure she doesn’t give your back grief.”

 

           “Okay,” Finn said, and lay back down.

 

           “C’mere, Princess,” Poe said, and heard a small excitable yip from Princess and a deflated noise from Finn as Princess scrabbled onto the bed. “Hey, precious. Get off Finn’s stomach. Oof!”

 

           “She’s heavy,” Finn warned him.

 

           “You don’t say.” Poe turned onto his side, and Princess curled up against his stomach, close to the wall.

 

           “Hey, are you cuddling the dog instead of your boyfriend?”

 

            There was humour in Finn’s voice, a smile in his words, and an answering smile spread across Poe’s face, unseen in the darkness. “Just making sure she stays off your bad back, Finn.”

 

            Finn chuckled, and Poe felt Finn’s warmth against his own back as Finn moved over and put an arm over Poe’s waist.

 

            “Go to sleep,” Finn said.

 

***

 

             [Why does Designation-Princess get to sleep with you,] BB-8 whistled at Poe first thing in the morning, running over Poe’s bare foot as he stood at the bathroom sink. [It’s not fair! Fucking flyboys playing favourites!]

 

             “Ow!” Poe yelped. “You little nerf-sucking bastard!”

 

             [PLAY NICE, YOU SHITTY EXCUSE FOR A DROID,] Finn bleeped very loudly from the bedroom.

 

            BB-8 ran back over Poe’s other foot. Poe tried to jump out of its way, but you couldn’t swing a cat in their bathroom, even supposing you wanted to.

 

            “Shit! Finn, you’re just encouraging him. BB-8, I swear on the Force, if you don’t stop it I will shut you down!”

 

            BB-8 let out a long stream of whirred profanity and shot into the other room, screaming like R2D2 in a rage.

 

            [You aren’t fluffy and warm,] Finn said. [And Designation-Princess is little and vulnerable. We take special care of her. You can deal with anything.]

 

            Poe brushed his teeth.

 

            “ _Fuck_!”

 

           “’ot?” Poe demanded, spitting out froth into the sink.

 

           “He just shocked me! You banthafucking prick!”

 

           Poe dropped his head into his hands.

 

***

 

            Poe had stepped outside the party for a breather – and, okay, to go and check on Princess, who has been left in their quarters with toys and food and water, but still gets someone looking in on her every half an hour – when General Organa loomed out of the darkness.

 

            She couldn’t be more than about five foot tall, but the woman could still damn well loom. Poe, being an experienced fighter pilot and Resistance operative who definitely did not view his commanding officer with mildly terrified awe, especially when drunk – which he definitely wasn’t - definitely did not jump, and definitely did not fumble his salute.

 

            “At ease, Dameron,” General Organa said, sounding amused.

 

            “Yes ma’am.” Poe collected himself and his scattered synapses. “Are you going back to the party?”

 

            He managed not to sound doubtful. General Organa often dropped in on the more respectable parties held by her soldiers for half an hour or so, and then left before things could get too rowdy. While the definition of rowdy was flexible – General Organa was a soldier who’d been married to a smuggler and once infiltrated a Hutt’s den dressed as a dancing girl – no-one in there would want to face her as they were at the moment.

 

            “No. I was just heading back to my quarters when I saw you.” General Organa put her hands in her pockets. “I wanted to ask you about Finn. How’s he doing?”

 

            “He’s… well,” Poe said, uncertain, and then stood up as straight as he could at present. “I still think he would benefit from having a proper role, ma’am. I still think we would _all_ –”

 

            General Organa removed one hand from a pocket for the express purpose of flapping it at him. “I know, Dameron. I know. I agree with you. And I’ll find the right place as soon as I can.”  


            “I don’t doubt you, ma’am.”

 

            General Organa smiled rather wryly. “Good.”

 

            There was a slight pause. The noise of the nearby party, laughter and pounding music and some unfortunate being sick, pounded against Poe’s back like waves on the shore.

 

            “I actually wanted to know how he was doing without Rey.”

 

            Poe stared at her, then realised that was disrespectful, and directed his stare at the nearest tree.

 

            “Brave men who aren’t sure a fight is their fight,” General Organa said, filling the silence. “Brave men who lose an anchor. They need something to do. I’ve seen it before. And Finn doesn’t have an untrained Jedi to run around saving any more.”

 

            Pieces of old stories – Luke Skywalker shouting at Han Solo in a hangar; Leia Organa in the ice tunnels of Hoth, snapping and snarling at a smuggler claiming to be in it for the cash – kaleidoscoped in Poe’s brain. He found himself staring at her again, and got a very no-nonsense stare back.

 

            “What I need to know from you in this situation,” General Organa said, famously beautiful brown eyes diamond-hard and enigmatic as space itself, “is if this valuable asset is being wasted. Or if he can hang on a little longer while I kick some asses further.”

 

            Shara Bey the starfighter used to tell her little son stories of Han Solo the pilot, Han Solo the daredevil, Han Solo the reluctant teacher. Han Solo who couldn’t see someone working alone without coming over to snatch some part of their task out of their hands, who never missed an opportunity to pass on his knowledge of more specialised trade routes, to josh and tease a younger pilot into learning a few wily little tricks. Kes Dameron had been one of the Rebellion’s money men, making numbers dance and stretch to nearly-new blasters and more rations, and he’d told his teenaged boy about the man who said all he wanted was money, but who mostly wanted to be thanked and given somewhere solid to stand - even if he wasn’t going to stay.

 

            Their little son, their teenaged boy, their grown goddamn adult Poe Dameron – finest pilot in the Resistance – was both too drunk for this and stuck with a lot of feelings about his commanding officer and her late husband. He scraped together some words until he was sure they made sense and wouldn’t get him busted out of Black Squadron.

 

            “He’s better, ma’am,” Poe said at last. “Princess helps. He has something to do that’s always his job, not a short-term project. He says her training’s coming along well, he thinks she’s almost ready for a mission. He – talks about Rey, wonders where she is. But he doesn’t say it like he’s going to try and go look for her any more. He’s okay waiting for her.”

 

            General Organa nodded.

 

            “Thank you, Dameron. That’s all I wanted to know.”

 

            “Ma’am,” Poe said. He waited until she had nodded at him and gone, soft-footed into the night, and then he waited until he felt confident that his legs would hold him, and then he went back to the little room he shared with Finn and Princess.

 

            Princess had fallen asleep in the middle of their bed with one of Poe’s boots half-chewed in her paws. Poe sat next to her and stroked her fur as she twitched in her sleep, and stared at the shadow of the moon on the wall.

 

***

 

            “We can do better,” Finn said, in the sombre shuttle on their way home from Princess’s first mission.

 

            “You and Princess rescued sixteen kids,” Poe said.

 

            “There were twenty-three in the class.”

 

            “You can’t save all of them.”

 

            Finn was silent. Stormtroopers knew that as well as the Rebellion’s footsoldiers; were supposed to know it better. But from what Finn had let slip to Poe, that was one lesson he’d never been particularly good at learning.

 

            “And that baby,” Poe said. “We’d never have found her without Princess.”  


            Finn almost grinned, and leaned forward on the jump seat at the back of the cockpit. “You know what her parents call her now?”

 

            “Finna, yeah.” Poe rolled his eyes and grinned over his shoulder at Finn. “Snap’s never going to let you forget that.”  


            “Hey, it could have been Princess,” Finn said. “And turns out that’s a rude word back there.”

 

            “Damn,” Poe said, “should’ve made the General come up with a better name,” and they’re both almost laughing when Snap pokes his head through the cockpit door.

 

            “Can dogs eat green daisies?” Snap asked.

 

            Finn rocketed to his feet. “Maybe. Why?”

 

            “’Cause the kids made Princess a crown, and she just ate some of it.”  


            “Force, Snap!” Finn exclaimed, slapping his face with one exasperated hand. “If she’s sick, you’re cleaning it up!”

 

***

 

            It was an ordinary day when Rey and Chewbacca came back, dragging Luke Skywalker in their trail, and from the moment they set foot on Resistance soil again it became an extraordinary one. Because everyone wanted a piece of Luke Skywalker the legend, of Chewbacca the hero, of Rey, still unquantified and unquantifiable with starlight in her eyes and teeth. Because General Organa had some explanations to demand. Because Chewbacca had some reports to deliver. Because the mechanics could see what Rey had done to the Falcon from here, and they wanted to know how that ship was still running – spit, prayer, the will of the Force, or all three?

 

            But for the first few minutes, it’s just Rey laughing as she kneels to greet a half-grown dog with shy hands, Finn beaming with his hand on their little tyrant’s collar, Poe smiling, because he can’t help it, and –

 

            “Who’s this?” Rey says.

 

            “Princess,” Finn says. “My dog.”

 

            “She does search and rescue,” Poe says. “Finn trained her. She’s brilliant.” He shakes his head. “They’re brilliant.”  


            Rey looks up at them with hazel eyes that can see through worlds. “Sounds about right,” she smiles, and Princess licks her clean across the face.


End file.
